The role of regional development agencies on the regional planning progress, the case of Izmir Development Agency 2010-2013 Izmir Regional Development Plan

In a world rapidly globalizing, it is intended to reduce the imbalanced interregional development by enabling interregional competition. One of the tools to enable interregional competition is the ?Regional Development Agency? which was first founded in 1933 in Tennessee region of USA. Development Agencies, enable the economic development of regions through risk and opportunity analysis by determining the potentials of those regions. Another component of regional development is regional planning. It is necessary to distinguish regional planning and regional development paradigms in order to enable interregional competition.Regional plans are the mesoscale plans that provides the connection between national plans and local plans, and they shall not consist of economic decisions only. Regional plans shall include spatial and social data in order to direct subscale plans. However, in Turkey, only the economic aspects of regional planning are considered.Regional Development Agency, which is one of the main players that enabled USA to overcome the 1929 crisis, started to spread world-wide at 1950s. European Union, foresees the establishment of Development Agencies in order to reduce the imbalance between EU members and EU candidates. In this context, it is planned to establish Development Agencies in 26 regions of Turkey which are determined according to the ?Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics? through EU Adaptation Period Reforms. The authorization of making ?regional plans? is given to State Planning Organization (SPO) within the scope of law no. 3194. SPO transferred this right to the 26 Development Agencies under its coordinationship and approved the plans that are made by these agencies.